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Smedley Tweets Some EQNext Hints...
Tallyn
Member UncommonPosts: 217
I rarely bother with anything twitter related but for some reason I checked it today and found that Smedley had posted these two pics, I assume, in regards to EQNext.
Picture of a sandbox: https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/342744576181821441/photo/1
Picture of a roller coaster with an X over it(Note the incredible art skills): https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/342745058103160832/photo/1
I swear, that man is a hype machine, but it gives me hope that the more excited Smedley is about a project (Particular for a franchise him and his buddies started ages ago) that the better quality of product SOE is going to put out.
I had grown to despise SOE in the past but with their recent amazing dev to player interactions in PS2, laying out their plans for development for all to see and comment, listening to players opinions, keeping the F2P model actually balanced, and overall amazing customer support in these past 6 months I couldn't be more hopeful for an MMO to be successful.
Comments
They woo you in with sweet words, good looks and kind promises, but its all the same with SoE, you end the night bent over with your pants around your ankles..
again..
and again...
and again...
and again..
and again..
Is it really worth it?
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I don't think that you have been paying attention for the past 6 months. I can understand your skepticism however, as I too gave up hope for SOE titles for a very long time. Hence the Project 1999 tag in my signature.
What you need to look at though is how in the past 6 months their entire business model and attitude towards their customers (both paying and non-paying) has completely done a 180. Yes, they have hyped before and yes they have failed miserably, but if you have been paying any attention at all to their players and devs and the track record with Planetside 2 then you would have noticed that something is quite different.
Go read the Planetside 2 reddit page and you'll see how half of the posts are either devs commenting on player concerns or players commenting on how friendly, respectful, and helpful SOEs customer service has been.
Actions speak louder than words and in my opinion SOEs recent actions and interactions show that they are no longer that money hungry player screwing over company that deserved the bad rap it's got over the past 10 or so years.
They do not want this game to fail. Hype is hype but if you visit any website besides MMORPG (Which really is just full of trolls and negative nancys) you would see that SOE is pouring everything into EQNext to make it do some damage in the MMO market for a long extended period of time.
*shrug* Just my 2 copper. I have faith in The Vision once again.
Edit: Just saw your edits. I stand by my post. Once again, last 6 months. All of your links are from 2011 or before? As I said, their business model and attitude has completely turned around recently and you would be wise to take note of it from their players and devs words together.
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I completely agree with you and although I may defend SOEs position as a great MMO creator recently, I am still slightly skeptical as well.
However, if they do follow a similar model as Planetside 2 (Except for maybe releasing it a bit more developed *cough*) then the good thing is that we will not have to spend a single dime in-order to play it unless we feel like they deserve it.
That is the greatest way to tell a company if you support their business practices and efforts after all.
Aren't the likes of wizardary by 3rd parties?
I actually enjoyed EQ2 allot and PS2 is a very solid game and the one thing I can say about SoE is they listen to their players and I think with Titan being delayed and WoW on the decline EQN is in a great position to be the next big MMO. WildStar and ESO are in the running but EQ is an established MMO serious and sony has a ton of experience and will hopefully learn from mistakes it made.
If the quality of PS2 is an indication of what we can expect from the future then I'm pretty excited.
They are saying all the right things.
But will that translate to delivering all the right things.
I am hopeful. Not quite optimistic, just, hopeful.
All die, so die well.
I think they will pull through with EQN.
I am not confident it'll be a game changer in the market, those days are long gone. But it will probably do very well by today's standards.
Thing with Everquest is that it is SOE's mainstay. It is a legacy thing. They won't do wrong by it and definitely want it to succeed more than other titles they have released.
Everything I have heard and seen I like so far. Do I need to like 100% of everything presented to give it a shot? No. I can live with certain things being not how I like them so long as overall things are good.
I just want it to go back some. Remove a few of the popular things. No more theme park for sure. Not that theme park is terrible, it is fun sure BUT... makes grouping so hard. If I want to group with a friend, means I have to go do a quest with him and get NOTHING out of it (because all the XP is earned via the quest, not the mobs), or vice versa.
I can rant for days.
Bottom line: too early to tell what it'll be like, but they seem to be indicating a direction that people are missing.
Ps2 might not be for you, but for its Target audience, pvpers best mmo of the last decade. Your going back to eve, daoc, lineage 2, shadowbane, planetside 1 etc.. for better pvp.